"a sort of lifelong pregnancy"

Below is a quote I found while reading a novel. It fits so well how I feel about our life here in South America these 16 years.... Kathy

“Being a foreigner, Ashima is beginning to realize, is a sort of lifelong pregnancy- a perpetual wait, a constant burden, a continuous feeling out of sorts. It is an ongoing responsibility, a parenthesis in what had once been ordinary life, only to discover that the previous life has vanished, replaced by something more complicated and demanding. Like pregnancy, being a foreigner, Ashima believes, is something that elicits the same curiosity from strangers, the same combination of pity and respect.”

Jhumpa Lahiri in THE NAMESAKE